The Byronic Hero
by Bryher
Summary: An author has some serious explaning to do. Onshot.


**Title:** The Byronic Hero; You're Not Sorry.

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** An author has some serious explaining to do.

**Author's Notes:**

Please visit my profile for updates on 'Forsaken'.

Self insertion (third person); based on a recent lecture on Byronic Heroes and Taylor Swift's 'You're Not Sorry'- the remix.

Please read this for what it is: there is no sanity here.

A bit cathartic, a bit explanatory, a bit indulgent. Mostly stupid.

* * *

The library was quiet- a rather superfluous statement, but for a building normally filled with students, librarians, technicians and professors, the silence was one of nothingness rather than one of muffled voices and soft movements. Leaning with one arm on the table, Bryher turned another page of lecture notes and frowned.

Another light group blinked into darkness behind her, the university's 'green policy' motion sensors finding nothing to illuminate. Blocked from detection by the shelves, Bryher sat in the darkness, orange light from the main square flooding through the windows and lighting up the seventies style clock on the wall. 23.43.

Tilting her head to one side, she listened for any other noise on her floor, then leaned forward to peer down the long aisle that made one of the main thoroughfares. The only light was a dim glow from the bowels of the Religious Studies section, a soft glow that outlined the shelves in gold. Leaning back, Bryher studied the handwritten passage before her by the light of the streetlamp.

_Byronic Hero: characteristics: _

_1. Sinful or transgressive. _

_2. An outsider._

_3. Redeemed by Love. _

_4. Love can't be satisfied._

_5. A secret sinner. _

Thumbing the corner of the file, Bryher flicked it shut after a moment. Standing, she was abruptly bathed in light as the sensor detected the sudden movement. Tucking away her file and a heavy book of Romanticism poetry into a rucksack, she slung the load over her shoulder and made for the exit, fumbling in her pocket for the phone-come-MP3 player her ex-boyfriend had convinced her to buy in haste.

Passing the information desk, she nodded a goodnight to the porter and pushed through the doors, memory bemusedly recalling his reason for that particular mobile phone: he was hungry. '_Just get it'_, he'd said. _'Trust me, it's a good model.' _Twenty minutes later, as he wolfed down some burger from a fast food outlet, he'd admitted; '_Actually, er, it isn't that good. I was just hungry- you were taking ages!'_

The cool night air was refreshing after the heat of the library, and Bryher paused for a moment, savouring the feel of the breeze against her flushed cheeks. Idly playing with the phone and earphones in her hand, Bryher looked down at them before tucking them slowly back into her pocket, ignoring the pang of sadness that tugged at her insides.

The path alongside the playing field was lined on one side by trees, which in turn sat atop a steep hill, blocking off the university from the sport area with a long barrier. A floodlit game of football was taking place at the bottom of the incline, the shouts of spectators distant. Following the path upward into the tree line, Bryher kept walking, feeling the cold start to seep into her body. After a moment, she stopped. Experimentally, she blew into the air in front of her. Her breath misted, clouding up in plumes of white. She frowned.

It was March in northern Britain, but it wasn't that cold. The daytime had been filled with sunshine and had been unusually warm. Glancing around, she dropped her bag to the floor and simply stood still. The noise from the football had faded, but that might have been the trees muffling the sound. There was no light, save that which came from the gibbous moon overhead; Bryher sighed. The trees weren't so thick as to block out the floodlights and the streetlamps.

'Bryher?'

And that voice certainly did not belong on campus.

Bending, Bryher picked up her bag. 'Hello, Tristan.'

He stood in a patch of moonlight, his horse a few steps behind him. 'I brought another horse,' he said after a moment, bending his tongue around the foreign words.

Bryher nodded, securing the rucksack onto both shoulders and walking towards him. Behind his mount stood a docile mare, her breath whooshing out into the frigid air as she tramped her hooves against the ground nervously. Reaching out, Bryher untied her leading rope and looped it back over her mount's neck, murmuring softly. Lifting herself into the saddle, she adjusted her position until she found a comfortable position. It had been a long time since she'd been on horseback. Tristan, already mounted, gave her a questioning glance. Bryher waved a hand idly with a tired smile. Nudging his horse gently, he led the way through the trees, Bryher moving up to ride beside him, a companionable silence settling between the two of them.

Reaching the Wall didn't take long, the black line across the hillside rising out the darkness like a leviathan from the sea. Torches burned across the night sky, lighting the moving shapes of patrolling guards on the walltop. Passing under the gates, Tristan and Bryher rode for the stables, the scout nodding to the guard as the gates were heaved into place for the night.

Bryher directed her mount to an empty stall, halting the mare and dismounting before she ended up in the stall itself. Looking around, she noted the several empty stalls. 'Where is everyone?' she asked as Tristan rode in behind her.

'There was a raid on one of the coastal villages,' Tristan replied, dismounting smoothly.

Bryher worked the grip loose on the saddle. 'And you aren't there because…?' Lifting the saddle from the mare, she turned to face the scout. Tristan lifted one shoulder slightly- his version of a shrug. 'Injured.'

Bryher frowned. 'Injured?'

He lifted his shirt slightly, revealing white bandages underneath. 'Woad raid.' His voice held a slightly mulish tone, and his eyes glittered in the half light.

Bryher glared, guessing his pique. 'If I'm not writing about you, you have to look after yourselves. I'm not your mother.'

'You're the author.'

'Not all the time, I'm not.'

Tristan huffed in frustration, heaving his own saddle off with a grunt. 'Why not?'

Bryher lifted her eyes to the ceiling in frustration. The man asked damnably straightforward questions in the most awkward of conversations.

'Because I can't, Tristan. That isn't how it works. You're muses… you sort of… exist,' she finished lamely, turning her back on the Sarmatian to groom the mare. The horse seemed to wear an expression of bemusement.

'So what do you do in your world when you're here? You can't just disappear.' Bryher stopped brushing. 'I don't know,' she said after a moment, lifting her hand to continue. 'I'm either on my own or it's night time, so.. I suppose my vanishing doesn't seem that odd.'

Tristan appeared on the other side of her mare, brush in hand. Looking over her shoulder, Bryher realised his horse was being tended to by Jols. She gave the squire a half wave and a smile before turning back to the mare. Tristan was tending to her other side. 'What if someone is there?'

'When?' Bryher replied, concentrating on a patch of dirt.

'At night.'

Bryher struggled to keep a neutral expression. 'There are usually other activities going on. I don't think about this place then.'

'What kind of activities?'

'Scrabble,' she snapped, glaring at the scout. He rasped a laugh, dropping the subject in favour of not being clattered with a dandy brush. They worked in silence until the mare's coat gleamed.

'Rooms?' Tristan said after they had replaced the brushes in their rightful places. Bryher nodded, picking up her bag from where she had dumped it outside the stall.

With another wave to Jols, she followed Tristan from the stables and towards the barrack building.

Tristan's room was comfortable and clean, the embers glowing in the fireplace lighting the room in a dim glow. Bryher settled herself in one of the chairs at the small table as Tristan moved around, putting more logs on the fire and lighting the lamps. Pulling her file out of her bag, she turned to the last page she had read in the library, thinking over something that had been nagging at her since her romanticism lecture.

Looking up, she studied the knight at the window. Pulling the shutters together, Tristan secured the board across them and turned back to her, tilting his head in inquiry at her bemused expression.

'What?' he said after a moment, pulling the other chair out and settling himself across from her.

'You're a Byronic Hero,' Bryher said with a half smile. Tristan reached over, pulling the file towards himself, scanning over the scribbled ink. It was upside down.

Bryher raised an eyebrow. 'You and Galahad are more alike than you think.'

It was Tristan's turn to raise an eyebrow.

'The last time I had a writing drought, Galahad invaded my room. He was trying to read Tennyson,' she explained. Silently, Tristan pushed the file back towards her.

'Explain what you mean.'

Bryher frowned. 'About Galahad?'

'About _Byron_.' He said the name slowly, feeling the word on his lips. Bryher sat back, a mulish expression crossing her features. 'I spent the last three hours in the library going over Byronic heroes, Tristan. I can't really be arsed. Besides- you don't want to know about who you've been compared to. I hardly think you want to be compared to Heathcliff.'

The scout shrugged, and fixed her with another look. 'Then talk about why you haven't been writing.'

'A 'please' would be nice,' she challenged, irritated. Tristan said nothing, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair expectantly.

Bryher sighed, rubbing her face tiredly. 'I just don't have time,' she said helplessly, lifting her hands palms up. 'Honestly. I would if I could.'

'That's not all it, though, is it?'

Bryher narrowed her eyes. 'Meaning?'

Tristan leant forward, palms flat on the table. 'We're your muses. Sometimes we know what you know, feel what you feel.'

'Tristan,' Bryher warned, 'If this is going to turn into some interrogation session, I'll just go back- and I'll do something horrific in the next update.'

The dark haired man smiled mirthlessly. 'What? Another Mary-Sue? We can get rid of them ourselves now.' She glared.

'How?' she asked after a moment, annoyed by her own curiosity. A log on the fire popped, sending a sheet of sparks across the stone floor. Bryher watched them flare and die out, avoiding Tristan's eyes.

'We have your cynicism. Your sarcasm,' Tristan murmured with another debonair shrug. 'They can't really stand up against your brand of rationalism.'

'Rationalism?' Bryher laughed. 'I'm talking to a muse in the middle of the Dark Ages at Hadrian's Wall.' Turning her eyes back to the ruffled man, she ran a hand through her hair nervously at his knowing look.

'That's your problem, not ours- but what you know and put into this, what ever _this_'; he motioned around the room; 'is, is a weapon against them. So I want you to tell me why you've been listening to sad music and hiding away in the nights watching the moving little people on that box.'

Bryher sat and stared. Tristan might have looked triumphant if it wasn't for the look that passed over her face. Instead, his expression grew serious, and he leaned forward, palms flat against the table as if he were about to get up and go to her.

'I think I preferred it when Bors was pissing about in my 207 seminar,' Bryher said quietly. 'And it's called a television,' she added as an afterthought.

'Whatever it's called, it's annoying,' Tristan said dismissively.

Bryher fixed him with a look, anger suddenly flaring. 'When did you get so talkative, huh? I don't write you like this, Tristan. You're not supposed to ask awkward questions and put me on the spot, you're supposed to just…' she faltered. 'You're supposed to be the one who just accepts,' she finished in a small voice.

Tristan frowned. 'Am I supposed to accept your tears for a decision that you _know_ was right?'

Bryher gaped. '_Enough,_ Tristan. Seriously. There is no need for this.'

'There is every need for this,' he snapped back, eyes flashing. He stood, striding to the fire to stoke it, giving Bryher a moment to swipe the sudden moistness at her eyes. 'Bryher,' he said after a moment. 'You have to stop this now. This feeling of,' he struggled for the word, brow creasing as his mind worked over the possibilities. 'Desolation,' he finished.

'It isn't desolation, Tristan. It's a breakup,' Bryher muttered. She held up a hand to hold back his next torrent of words. 'I know that I need to pull myself together, Tristan. Trust me, I know. I'm annoying myself now. It's just taking longer than I thought, that's all.'

The knight studied her expression for a long moment. Lifting her chin, Bryher met his gaze steadily. 'I will sort this, Tristan. Just give me time.'

He nodded, then made to sit back down, snagging her bag from the floor. Bryher raised an eyebrow, then breathed a quiet laugh as her Romanticism anthology was placed in front of her. 'I would like to hear some of this Byron.'

Opening on the folded corner, Bryher looked up at the scout through her hair. 'You sure?'

He nodded.

* * *

_In secret we met— _

_In silence I grieve, _

_That thy heart could forget, _

_Thy spirit deceive. _

_If I should meet thee _

_After long years, _

_How should I greet thee? _

_With silence and tears._

**Byron: When We Two Parted, final stanza.**

_You don't have to call anymore,_

_I won't pick up the phone. _

_This is the last straw, _

_There's nothing left to beg for. _

**Taylor Swift: You're Not Sorry. (Remix.)**

* * *

I would very much appreciate reviews, though I'll admit that this text is somewhat self-serving and a rather poor attempt at explaining why I've been absent while trying to maintain a shred of dignity.

Still. If you have it in you to review, I would be incredibly grateful.

Bryher.


End file.
